God of Abraham your father and the God of Isaac; the land on which you lie I will give to you and to your offspring;

Transcription

1 Rev John Matheson 1 Genesis 28:10-19a 28:10 Jacob left Beer-sheba and went toward Haran. 28:11 He came to a certain place and stayed there for the night, because the sun had set. Taking one of the stones of the place, he put it under his head and lay down in that place. 28:12 And he dreamed that there was a ladder set up on the earth, the top of it reaching to heaven; and the angels of God were ascending and descending on it. 28:13 And the LORD stood beside him and said, "I am the LORD, the God of Abraham your father and the God of Isaac; the land on which you lie I will give to you and to your offspring; 28:14 and your offspring shall be like the dust of the earth, and you shall spread abroad to the west and to the east and to the north and to the south; and all the families of the earth shall be blessed in you and in your offspring. 28:15 Know that I am with you and will keep you wherever you go, and will bring you back to this land; for I will not leave you until I have done what I have promised you." 28:16 Then Jacob woke from his sleep and said, "Surely the LORD is in this place--and I did not know it!" 28:17 And he was afraid, and said, "How awesome is this place! This is none other than the house of God, and this is the gate of heaven." 28:18 So Jacob rose early in the morning, and he took the stone that he had put under his head and set it up for a pillar and poured oil on the top of it. 28:19a He called that place Bethel; but the name of the city was Luz at the first.

2 2 Matthew 13:24-30, :24 He put before them another parable: "The kingdom of heaven may be compared to someone who sowed good seed in his field; 13:25 but while everybody was asleep, an enemy came and sowed weeds among the wheat, and then went away. 13:26 So when the plants came up and bore grain, then the weeds appeared as well. 13:27 And the slaves of the householder came and said to him, 'Master, did you not sow good seed in your field? Where, then, did these weeds come from?' 13:28 He answered, 'An enemy has done this.' The slaves said to him, 'Then do you want us to go and gather them?' 13:29 But he replied, 'No; for in gathering the weeds you would uproot the wheat along with them. 13:30 Let both of them grow together until the harvest; and at harvest time I will tell the reapers, Collect the weeds first and bind them in bundles to be burned, but gather the wheat into my barn.'" 13:36 Then he left the crowds and went into the house. And his disciples approached him, saying, "Explain to us the parable of the weeds of the field." 13:37 He answered, "The one who sows the good seed is the Son of Man; 13:38 the field is the world, and the good seed are the children of the kingdom; the weeds are the children of the evil one, Nearer my God to Thee

3 Jacob is on a long trip with no reservations. He only stops when the sun went down and he lies down on the ground. Few of us have ever been equipped for sleeping on the ground and for comfort he chooses a rock for a pillow. It is not a my pillow but it is better than nothing. In the restlessness of that sleep he has an important dream. He sees angels moving from here to there, up and down, between heaven and earth. When I first came to this neighbourhood there was a storefront on Queen Mary Road with two figures in the window of an otherwise empty store. One figure was of a standing bear holding a blonde wig in one paw and the other was of an equally tall angel that I declared in a Bible study here to be life- sized. A voice ( Drew) asked how I knew it to be life sized. Well I didn t know and still don t. Angels have always been fascinating. How many can dance on the head of a pin or how many does it take to fill a store in St. Jacobs? In Jacob s dream they are carrying messages back and forth from earth to heaven or forth and back. Some years ago there was a book called The Celestine Prophecy which suggested that in any meeting between people, each person had a message from God for the other person and the task was to exchange those messages. The idea struck a chord with me. What do we have to say to the person in front of us and what do they have to say to us? Pilgrim s Progress is a story of one man s (Christian) journey from here to the Celestial City. Along the way he meets many people. Some help him and others try to hold him back and want him to stay with them. He presses on. We in this church are on are on a trip. It has been long. We thought we had it all planned out but we are sort of sleeping on the ground tonight with not much comfort and no pillow but a collection of hymnbooks. Normally we are used to comfort but we are now waiting for the messengers of God to direct us into the future. Last week with Margaret s help we took a trip to New Zealand to visit a shaky church and we learned about the creative use of cardboard. Who knows what we shall discover from God s messengers about our own future. Jacob got two messages from the angels. The first was that this is the place where he was going to end up and life was going to be pretty good. There would be lots of descendants. The second message was a demand that this new people would be a blessing for all people. That call has been handed down all the way to us. We are not ruthless exploiters of others. We are called to be blessing to all. We can all be proud after year Canada was named the best place in the world to live. Although we have fallen from first place, we are still near the top of the list. It is on the trip that we get direction for the road ahead. The call is to be a blessing for all,and we are figuring out what that means. Jacob had his sneaky side and he had done well in life, and here he is in a dream finding out what to do with his blessings. First thing In the morning Jacob recognizes the importance of that night and these messages and is filled with awe. Even though he hadn t known it, he knows now that God is in this place. We know too. Mark the spot and don t lose track of where it is and how we got here. The fool says that there is no God. Jacob is no fool. 3

4 Plant the seed. The package said that the contents it were % percent pure and clean and weed free. Where did all the weeds come from? And what do we do about them now? honest. We are not the first to wonder about heaven and what it is like. Jesus often said it is like this or that image. Today it is good seed and another time it will be mustard seeds or yeast in bread. Heaven is like. It is not this or that or here or there or now or then. The disciples didn t understand either just exactly what Jesus meant. They asked him later to go over it again. How are we to deal with the weeds? This week my neighbour laid sod with the all day help of five workers. I must confess that I was tempted to call out green side up but I didn t and they managed pretty well without me. The finished product looked like AstroTurf and a few days of watering, and it is growing to look real and is already in need of cutting. My lawn on the other hand was sown from seed marked % weed free. That is not what I got. I got everything including three kinds of clover, plantain,sorrel, dandelions, and even buttercups. How to deal with them. As a young child I was sent to the garden to weed the rows of beans. It was not adequately explained to me just what the difference was between a weed and a bean plant. I probably plucked as many beans as weeds and was not rehired the following day. It didn t bother me to lose that job and it is a strategy that might come in handy in other situations. My mistake was honest. Jesus said the kîngdom is like that. You start off with good seed but in no time weeds appear. Plucking them out was the first thought but the master said to leave them be or you might do more damage than good. The task of separating will come later. There might be a strategy there for dealing with the weeds and brokenness of our world. Let it be and deal with it later. This morning a robin was grocery shopping on my lawn and not across the street. God has a plan. Instead of fretting about the long list of sins and injustices daily presented to us in the news, know that it will be dealt with later in God s time. Not everything needs our frantic involvement today. Truth is in keeping a perspective of the longer-term plan of God. Just after leaving home I started referring to my home geography as god's country. Returning for visits was and still is regenerative. It is a spot when the Coldwater river empties through wetlands into Georgian Bay. The land is practically useless for anything other than growing pine trees. But it's biodiversity is almost beyond belief. There are still lots of fish and five kinds of turtles and it has to be the watersnake Capitol of the world. Draw a ten kilometre circle around it and it gave Montreal four of its ministers. Before my family got there native Americans made petroglyphs inside that circle. It is a special place to me and I didn t know until I left. Just like Jacob didn t know until the experience was over. God offered him that land. It became for him Holy Land and he recognized just how God had been there with him. It made him afraid. 4

5 5 A tourist visiting the back of a church in a faraway land finds a golden téléphone with a sign direct line to heaven, one thousand dollars a call. That is odd thought the tourist, the tourist was from here no doubt some kind of a scam. As the trip went on, other places had similar phones and the same sign. The tourist got more and more curious but never asked until discovering our phone. It was the same phone and the same sign except here the call was free. local call from here. It is not long distance. God is standing beside us. Amen.